Winter Survival Food: French Onion Soup

A playlist of Ryan's cooking videos youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4e4wpjna1vwy_2QlwOmiPI…

When I was younger I worked in a restaurant in a small tourist town. If business was slow, we’d whip open the windows and door and the chef would sauté onions. The smell wafting out into the street smelled amazing and got customers in the door every time. The onion has such amazing aromatic power for such a small, simple food staple.

He is such a good speaker, so pleasant to just hear.

This is the first Townsends video I’ve seen from this dude. He really sets the scene and slays it. Fully on board with having this guy in the mix, five stars bro

I'm from Finland and our traditional cuisine is very much about surviving our long and harsh winters. It's still common here for people to forage mushrooms and berries and store them for winter. Not because it's necessary, but because the food from the forests is healthy. Whenever I make a hearty soup or stew in the winter, I somehow feel close to my ancestors and stop to think about what kind of lives they lead and how they survived. Loved this video!

We all really need to stop and think how good we have it. Being able to walk into any grocery store and have access to the amount of selections we have all year long is amazing.

I did the recipe. I'm brazilian. Im a 18 years-old engineering student. Whenever I see myself with no money from now on -which happens often-, I will just do the recipe so cheap medieval french peasants could afford. It was marvelous. I'm an autistic france nerd so that made my day. Thank you

I feel like Ryan and Joe Pera are both in the running for "people I want to read a book to me during a snowstorm while eating onion soup".

I was having a really rough day. I have lost a lot of things and people this year and the pressure of starting from scratch for the millionth time was weighing me down. Thankyou for this video. It calmed my spirit.

I love Ryan. He is so well spoken and you can sense his passion for the subject.

My wife's grandfather was born in 1920. As part of a college class project, I had to interview him about changes in technology during his lifetime. One of this things he told me about was putting up food for the winter. This included a big wooden box of sausages covered over in lard, onions (he said they got pretty rank by spring), root vegetables (buried in the root cellar), sauerkraut, and (of course) whatever fruits and vegetables you canned during the summer. It's amazing the things we take for granted these days, like central heating, vehicles with heat (rub an onion on the windshield to keep it from frosting up), direct dial phones, and television (his family had one of the first television sets in Lancaster, PA). He said that television was the biggest technological benefit in his lifetime as far as information and entertainment.

I love these "meager" recipes because I feel like that is something I can prepare myself, compared to a lot of modern dishes which can get quite complicated. Thank you!

He is such a good speaker, so pleasant to just hear.. Ryan is a national treasure..

I remember being the typical kid that hated onions...that changed pretty quick once I learned that onion is the best paired vegetable for basically every kind of meat from sea to air.

This video once again proofs, that there is not a single channel on YT more wholesome, entertaining, soothing and informative other than Townsends!!

I grew up behind the Iron Curtain and our winter food was very similar. The only fruit available at the stores were apples and maybe some small Cuban oranges around Christmas, white and red cabbage, and some root veggies. We stored potatoes, carrots, apples, lots of canned plums, cherries, applesauce, and pears in the basement. My grandmother made some sort of sweet puree from the fruits of our Rowan tree because they are a great source of vitamin C and we ate it with applesauce as a dessert.

I‘m in Lapland right now, its -17 degrees outside, sitting infront of the fireplace, having judt cooked and eaten this fabulous soup! thank you so much for this recipe and your great presentation mate!

Ryan is a national treasure.

A friend of my family's was a French war bride who had been a child in Paris during WWII. I asked her once to show me how to make French onion soup. Her version was what they ate during the war. Sweat and carmelize a pan of onions and add to a pot of water with a cubed potatoe. Cook until the potatoe disintegrates and thickens the water. Season with salt and pepper. I love any onion soup but they always seem too rich and salty after I learned to do it this way.

Today I made this soup! I followed the recipe in the video almost exactly (other than using margarine rather than butter - an unfortunate substitution made necessary by my lactose intolerance). The end result is indescribably delicious! It took a lot of effort and time (anyone who has browned/caramelized onions knows how long it takes) but the end result is, in fact, an incredibly savory yet inexpensive pot of soup to make - definitely stood the test of time! You pay for the flavor with patience rather than with expensive ingredients. Thanks for such an insightful and enjoyable video, as per usual, and for the inspiration to cook something fun!